MORGAN'S MOMENT...
Impossible I decided…
     after spending parts of two days
     shuffling through 50 years of photos.
I was supposed to find photos of me
     doing ministerial things
     for a program in Seattle.
I visualized a view of me
     high in one of my pulpits
     clad in my doctoral gown.
Not a single such photo…
     and hardly any from the many wedding
     I've done through the years.
No shots of me at gravesides
     but a few on my sailboat
     scattering ashes at sea.
It finally dawned on me
     that real moments of ministry
     can’t be photographed.
It would be sacrilegious
     to intrude a camera
     or a picture of me in such a time.
There are no photos of my ministry…
     because capturing such a moment
     is totally impossible.
The photos I sent were chosen
     mostly because I liked them…
     and I was holding my stomach in.
— Art Morgan 

BOOK CORNER
I've collected a long list of books we're
beginning to order from the library. No time for books right now. Lots of magazines to catch up on. I have a pre-nap book going right now….Senator John Danforth’s “Faith and Politics─ How the ‘Moral values’ debate divides America and How to move Forward Together.” He takes issue with his Republican colleagues for being tied in with the Christian Right and the implication that any religion or party can lay claim to possessing “God's truth."
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MOMENT MINISTRIES
Oct. 31, 2006
home address:  25921 SW Airport Ave.
Corvallis, OR 97333   541-753-3942
email at a-morgan@peak.org

CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE
Jean was talking about circles we all have in our lives. A large circle of Concern, from those near and dear to those unknown and afar, from the next room to Iraq, from the furnace to global warming. We can’t do much about most of it, but it's within our circle of concern.
A smaller circle, but larger than we imagine, is the Circle of Influence. Most of us think we don't have much influence, but we don't really know. We may have a high soap box or none, wide contacts or few. But we all have influence, perhaps none more powerful than the way we live our lives. “A city set on a hill cannot be hid…Let your light so shine…” No telling who may be inspired or directed. It was a late life revelation to me that most of the things my constituencies remember me saying or doing I have no knowledge or memory of myself. In some cases those remembered moments were life-changing. One never knows, so we cannot underestimate Influence. Even Jesus could never have imagined his influence through 2000 years.
The smallest circle, but the one where we feel more vital, is that of Action. One may not tackle all environmental problems, but choose a committee and get in on the action. Jean keeps an alphabetical list of situations or people she has concern for. It is memorized, so she can go to sleep making a prayer or sending warm support to each one. It's something you can do when there's nothing else to be done.  Many of you who read this would be surprised to know that you are on her list. She is also known for her dish cloths, not to mention hand-sent notes. We also try to stay in touch with occasional visits. We try to act on our concerns by making contributions to causes. What difference does it make? What good can it do? Who knows? But one thing Action does is keep us in real touch with things and people we care about.
Concern, Influence and Action. Remember those circles.

OTHER NOTES
Nancy Hathaway's “explanation” for absence was that she broke her ankle, her mother broke a wrist and then her hip, and that Greg fell off a ladder requiring surgery on his hand. She is excused
Just heard that a long-time friend and colleague, George Mitchell died this week. Clergy on this list will remember him.

 
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SOME THOUGHTS ON END ISSUES OF LIFE ON ALL SAINTS DAY

        I have been asked for counsel about End of Life issues on several fronts recently. The most recent was the Steering Committee for the Man to Man cancer support group I attended in Tacoma recently. Would I be willing to help put together a program on “end of life issues?” I presume that my professional career should  have provided me with some experience.
        I agreed, but suggested that we should not get too hung up about staying alive and avoiding death, or even about preparing for dying. Rather we should give attention to how valuable our lives are at the moment.
Probably my best suggestion was that we call in someone from Hospice, since End of Life is what they are all about.
        I have been monitoring several people who are seeing the end of the conveyor belt of life. Most of us notice the approach of this dropping off point as we grow older, but keep trying to either slow it down or extend it. We have known some who grew tired of living and wished for the end to come. As Jean's 97-year old Aunt Faye used to tell us, “I keep trying to kick the bucket but I can’t find it.” Most, however, want to keep going.
        Yes, I've had quite a few experiences with people's worries. One time I was called in by an ancient matriarch in deep distress as death approached following a stroke. She worried that her long deceased husband wouldn't welcome her in her aged and decrepit condition. I thought of telling her that Jesus taught that there was no marriage in heaven anyway, but that wasn't what she wanted to hear.
        One elderly man wanted to be baptized, mostly because his family feared for his soul's future. I think he and I both knew that we were performing a fraud to get the family off his case. Pastoral necessity, I called it, but not theologically defensible. I have administered Catholic baptism in the absence of a Priest for a new-born infant whose death was feared. What kind of God do they believe needs such acts?
        I know that I have flunked a number of funerals because I did not offer the traditional “onward to heaven” speech. What people don't want to hear is that Jesus hardly had a word to say about after-life. He was a here and now kind of guy who prayed for the Kingdom now and urged people to an abundant life while they lived. The gospel of John is a funeral favorite because it has Jesus promising anxious disciples that upon death they will be where he is, which is “with God,” whatever and wherever that is. What no one knows or can assure us is what that means. I can argue from John that what Jesus was saying was, “Don't worry about it.”
        As a minister, what should I do? I can tell you what people hope. They hope that whatever ideas they have grown up with, and not questioned or thought about all their lives, are true. They don't want to hear that I don't know any more than they know or that those preachers that make all sorts of promises based on a scattering of Bible passages are also speculating. Some find comfort in the passages of Revelation with John's spectacular visions of heaven.
        The fact is that upon death it's all out of our hands. Nothing we did or could have done will change whatever possibilities there may be. Curiosity and anxiety are not uncommon. More common is a time when it is more desirable to go to sleep and leave whatever comes next to the same mysterious source from which we came.
        Some people make a life of living toward death. They want to be good enough to be able to enter the gates and claim the reward. I always suspected that being good for sake of such a reward was a bit selfish. Why not be good because that's the best thing to be done, reward or not? Others never let their ancestors and loved ones go, so live out their lives as mourners longing for re-connection. I think the Buddhists, and many others who revere and remember ancestors, have something. I admit to talking to my mother and father and grandfather in particular. They don't talk back, but they have life in me at those moments. Albert Schweitzer wrote about going to visit graves of friends where he talked to them. The “communion of the saints” is a mystical and precious experience. But it is no basis for a solid argument for life beyond life.
        At any rate, all I know is that while we are alive our most sacred task is to live it as well as we can. We want to be thankful for each moment. The best form of thanks for a gift is to use it. We can’t waste time worrying about the end or thereafter. Eternity lies in each moment and the purpose of life is to translate these moments into eternity.
─ Art Morgan, October 31, 2006